Taking Stock

 

Last week the Federal Reserve over in the States made a shock move by cutting interests rates by 3/4 of a percentage point – the biggest move in 26 years. Their decision comes on the back of a significant down turn in the economy and is aimed at preventing a recession compounded by the likes of the sub prime crisis (cheap credit to you and me), drops in the housing market, rising oil prices and uncertainty in the Far East. The stock markets have responded accordingly with their highest fall since the terror attacks of 9/11 as everyone abandons them under the yell of, ’sell, sell, sell’. As they say, when America sneezes the world catches a cold.

Meanwhile in Europe, Jerome Kerviel has just been arrested for loosing his bank, Societe Generale, £3.7 billion in a wager that didn’t pay off. It’s said that for every percent drop on the Markets he was loosing the bank around £400 million. Adversely, Societe Generale’s loss was somebody or bodies gain. I guess what goes round, comes round.

Finally back at home the Government continues to underwrite the failings of Northern Rock to what is the equivalent of £2.000 for every tax payer, whilst deciding whether to sell out, to amongst others, Sir Richard Branson. As the Chancellor, Alistair Darling remarked, ‘The Government is not in the business of running banks’. Little need to when you own the Treasury, I’d have thought.

So with all this talk of money, perhaps now is a good time to take stock – since it appears not a good time to sell it!

The Bible has a lot to say on the subject of money, take Paul’s words for example: ‘Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.’ ‘Uncertain’, that’s the word that came to mind. I knew there was a verse related to money that contained the word ‘uncertain’. We’ll come back to it later.

Chris Evans once said that it is not money but the opportunity that money affords which makes it important. So is that why we strive after it, because you can trade it for opportunity? Does money have a lower value than the opportunities it can be traded for – an exotic holiday, a new second hand car (oxymoron included free), a brown leather settee? Money per sae has little worth if it can’t be traded for something that really matters, but then can what really matters be bought? I’ve never seen love for sale, have you?

Let’s not be naive, we all need cash and used wisely and invested properly you can save yourself some of the headaches found in the modern world. How much we need is a matter of debate, and whether now is a time to buy or sell is a matter for you and your Financial Advisor. But one thing is certain, if we think the accumulation of wealth holds the keys to a happy life, we are building on an uncertain foundation, and don’t just take my word for it, ask Jerome Kerviel.

Why Pray?

Yesterday, the theme for the sermon was prayer. “Is anyone in trouble,” wrote James, “he should pray.” It’s a good start.

In fact, statistics tell us that up to 40% of us pray. Of those 16% pray daily and 25% weekly. Apparently there is a lot of praying taking place! At Charis, the best attended and most spontaneous time of prayer we held was on the 9th September 2001 – I remember the time well, since we invited people to come and pray on the day of the terrorism attack on the Twin Towers in New York. With just a few hours notice, lots of people came out to pray. People pray when there is trouble ahead.

The subject of prayer provokes many and varied responses; from those who think prayer means everything to those who consider it to mean nothing and a whole gambit in between. But one thing seems to be common to the theme of prayer, people pray when they are in trouble. Of course, God desires that trouble is not the only reason for our prayers, since praying is more than simply shouting for help; its about communicating and connecting with God.

As such prayer should not be seen as an art form but a passion. Our prayers should not be a measured by their eloquence, but their sincerity. As Jesus said, “…when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.”  Prayer is not about length or structure, it’s about building a relationship with God.  Over the years, I have explored many different forms and types of prayer and discovered that all have their place. The important thing is not the type but the opportunity that prayer affords to each of us.

I’ve also discovered that prayer is not always answered – and certainly not in the way I would expect. And for some, this can become a reason not to pray. Why bother if nothing happens? Well, people do give testimony to answered prayer and many are the stories I have both given and heard in this respect. But it is true, that not all prayers are seemingly answered and we need to be honest about it. The bigger question is; if my prayer is not answered does that make it invalid?  Does it make the sincerity of my prayer either futile or foolish? Or is something else happening in that situation?

On discussing the life of Mother Teresa, Gerard Baker, columnist for The Times, quoted from her autobiography, Come Be My Light, where she repeatedly expressed the most excruciating of doubts about the existence of God and the faith to which she had dedicated her life.  I have not seen the book myself, but imagine it to be a painful read.

He writes, “that someone as self evidently devout as Mother Teresa could have been tormented for so long by such doubts should not be read as confirmation that the atheists have got it right.  The lesson of Mother Teresa’s long, dark night of the soul is precisely the opposite, in fact.  That faith, by its very nature, entails doubt.  If we could be really, truly certain, about the existence of God, what, really, would be the point of it all?”

I read in Isaiah just recently, “Truly you are a God who hides himself, Oh God and Saviour of Israel.” A God who is hidden, eh! But, if he is hidden, then he can be found, and that is what prayer is all about.  It gives room for doubt, fear, and dare I say, even unbelief, but at the same time, provides a refuge that is unsurpassed to those who are in the midst of trouble. As Alan Lewis wrote, “To pray is to confess not the abundance but the exhaustion of one’s verbal, intellectual, and spiritual resources. It is surrender…” and that is not such a bad place to be.

Fowl Play?

This week, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver have been doing their bit for chickens. We eat over 850 million of them each year in the UK and now their plight is being brought to the attention of the nation as two of our famous chefs come to the rescue.

For anyone unfamiliar with the life of a humble chicken – the none free range variety – a summary of their short existence goes something like this: Hatched in incubators in the factory, they are then dispatched down the conveyor belt, boxed into a van from where they are emptied into a barn, fed and watered without natural daylight, pumped with antibiotics to avoid disease, culled if they show weakness, reared for 39 days then slaughtered and prepared for the supermarket shelf. Of course, most of this takes place behind closed doors and now the public is slowly being wakened to their plight by a series of television shows. So what are we to make of it?

I like my chicken so ought I to care how it arrives on my plate, or simply look for the best bargain when out shopping? In Jamie’s programme, he went on to tell us that the British poultry farmer gets 3p – yes, 3 pence for every bird produced under intensive farming methods. That in itself has got to be a clue that somewhere, something is not right. We also got to see the different methods of farming on offer and, how ultimately, the way the chicken is reared is determined by consumer demand. That’s right, the plight of the chicken is in the hands of you and me.

It appears that somewhere along the way we have become so detached from the process of rearing life stock that the meat we see wrapped in cling film in the fridges has little connection with a real life animal earlier in the food chain. This detachment means that our conscience is not involved and therefore our choice is determined by only one factor – price. When faced with the reality of the process taken to provide us with whole chickens, plucked, prepared and giblets removed, we might start to think differently or at least that seemed to be the conclusion of the programme.

Outside of enjoying some time off this Saturday I was also left with final preparations for my sermon at Charis on the Sunday as well as writing my blog. The sermon includes this statement from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, ‘from the beginning God chose you to be saved…’ and my blog is about chickens! Now that’s diversity for you – or is it? Does God care for chickens, and should I care? Well, my sermon looks at the issue of God choosing us to be saved. Therefore, I go on to ask the obvious questions, saved from what and for what? I conclude that biblically we are saved for three things: to have a relationship with God, to receive eternal life and also to be reconciled with creation. Now, if we are to be reconciled with creation then our care for creation becomes a priority and surely that must have implications for the way in which we breed animals for food. Or at least it is appearing that way to me. We are not here to abuse the earth, but act as stewards of it, and that being the case it may well affect my pocket, and my spending habits too which could result in a better life for the chicken before it finally ends up on my dinner plate.

The Gate of the Year

In London the New Year got off to a fiery start with a fantastic firework display. Elsewhere, the New Year brought fresh speeches from some of the nation’s public figures. Here are a few snippets from two of them.

Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in his speech said, ‘For Britain, 2008 will be a year of real and serious changes. With important legislation making long-term changes in energy, climate change, health, pensions, planning, housing, education and transport, 2008 will be a year of measurable change in public services.’ Well, no doubt he will be measured at the end of the year on the back of that statement!

On a slightly different note, yet with similar theme, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams made his New Year speech. His title, ‘God doesn’t do waste’. In it he applied the thought of disposability to human life and relationships with these words: ‘What I wonder is – how much this influences attitudes in other parts of our lives? In a society where we think of so many things as disposable; where we expect to be constantly discarding last year’s gadget and replacing it with this year’s model – do we end up tempted to think of people and relationships as disposable? Are we so fixated on keeping up with change that we lose any sense of our need for stability?’

He has a good point. Are we living in an age of transferability – viewing people as commodities to be used until they no longer have value to us and then discarded?

Whatever our take on the New Year, it will come to us with both challenge and opportunity and probably not in equal measure. Rising up to it when it comes will take courage and determination and for that we need some inspiration to move forward. Mine came from a poem, written by Marie Louise Haskins and quoted by the King George IV during a New Year’s Eve message. I trust its truth will be birthed in us all at the start of 2008. It reads:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown!” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

And so may we all hold tightly to the hand of God as we venture through the joys and trials of the New Year.

Let me conclude by taking this opportunity to thank you for reading the blog over 2007 – I hope to continue into 2008, so please enjoy and feel free to comment. And if you do it enjoy it, don’t forget to email the link to a friend.

Tea Towels, Snow Patrol and Together for Christmas

What is it about Christmas?

I don’t mean the hype and the tripe – I mean what is about Christmas that sustains the magic it casts over us?

Take last night for example. I attended my daughters Christmas play for the Rainbows, Brownies and Girl Guides. Some of the little ones were dressed wearing the humble tea towel round their heads. How many times have we all seen that over the years? It never changes. If you need a Christmas prop, then the tea towel will always oblige. Tied as usual with a piece of string it sits there perfectly posed as the youngsters go about acting and playing their part.

And then I thought.

How appropriate that something as ordinary and humble as a tea towel should become an abiding memory of the Christmas story. As if its purpose speaks beyond what it is. How wrong it would be to replace the towel with a crown or hat. Its simplicity reminds us and retells the story of how God invades time and space in humility and vulnerability. When all is stripped away, the power of the Christmas story is left to tell its tale. And more.

When everything is stripped away and we’re left looking into a feeding trough into which the Christ Child is laid, its powerful story pulls us together. Here we see reconciliation, togetherness, and hope. As we gaze across an empty space and see a baby crying in a manger we see the extraordinary lengths to which God is prepared to travel in order to mend a broken world. What is it about a baby that brings warring factions together?

Outside of course the madness continues. Tranquillity gives way to tinsel and tack, but then, out of the blue I was redeemed in a most unusual way, when the Snow Patrol and their song Chasing Cars came to my rescue.

They sang…

I need your grace, To remind me, To find my own.

And then it clicked, and into all this madness I heard God speak, he said:

If I lay here, If I just lay here,  Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Then suddenly, the reality of Christmas came home again.

Finally, we were together.

Christmas Joy

 

The other day I started to think about the words of an old hymn. They are very powerful and were written by John Newton an old slave trader turned Christian from the 18th Century. The life of Newton has been common news over the past year with the commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade. Of all people, his life is a celebration of the light of God breaking into the darkness of a human soul. His latter years were spent in quiet contemplation of the lives lost to slavery and his part in that evil. His comfort came from a pen that allowed him to write the words of many a famous hymn, the most popular being Amazing Grace.

I soon discovered that the words of the song coming to my mind were also part of Newton’s treasury. Why they would come to me at Christmas when I’d easier be stirred by a good old carol I’m not sure but their depth and power is without question and serve to remind us that the babe of Bethlehem grows into the Christ of the crucifixion. Newton’s prose carve through the triviality of the season like a knife through roast turkey and when embraced in their fullness remind us again that the power of God’s grace is the same regardless of the century into which it is delivered.

That same grace which brought joy into the heart of a hardened slave trader is the same grace that can win over our hearts today and leave us with a Christmas joy that can’t be bought online, or found amongst the bargains of the High Street. We miss something if we don’t look beyond the superficial but gain everything when we allow the supernatural action of the virgin child to shape our reason for the season.

These are the words he wrote:

How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear! It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear.

He went on….

Dear Name, the rock on which I build, my shield and hiding-place, my never-failing treasury, filled with boundless stores of grace!

And we could write more… but sufficient are the words to warm the heart this Christmas and  may you hum them merrily as you sip your glass of mulled wine on this crisp, dark winter’s Eve.

The Cross: Not a Bloody Mess

I have a confession to make, so hold tight and here goes.

In our church at Charis we have a great worship team. No joke, they are the tops. Each week they gather together arriving earlier than everyone else to rehearse some songs which when we arrive later we all sing. There are four of them in the team, and because we are a small church (micro rather than mega church is how I would describe us) they have to do the stuff every week. And you know what – they do. They produce the goods, pull out the stops and make it happen. It’s great.

Anyhow, a couple of weeks back they introduced a new song. The songs they choose and how they lead the worship in our church often makes me cry. So, there you have it: my confession. I cry not only because they are great and do a fantastic job but also they choose such great songs for us to sing and worship through. This new song was brilliant. The words spoke about the blood of Christ and how that blood was shed for me. I know if you are not familiar with that Christian type language it sounds like it must have been a bloody mess, Jesus hanging on a cross: a terrible accident, an error of judgement on God’s part. But no! Not at all. It wasn’t a bloody mess – it was a bloody miracle!

And that’s why I was crying during the song! The miracle of Christ’s death was coming home to me again. His death, sacrificially on the cross has not only profoundly shaken the cosmos with eternal love, but has also captivated my heart with everlasting hope.

The Apostle Peter writes about it better than most in these words:

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.”

This was no divine accident, but divine intervention and I for one need to sing about it. How about you? Oh, and by the ways guys, keep on doing your stuff at Charis – we need it!

No More Mr Nice Guy

 

I’ve spent some time over the past week considering the words good and nice. Now, you may consider there to be little difference between the meanings of these words – but bear with me.

Just because a person is nice does not necessarily make them good and likewise, a good person may not always appear nice. For me, nice has the ring of superficiality about it, like in the phrase, ‘He seems like a nice boy’. I’m not sure what nice boys do, but I’m pretty certain what they don’t do. I’m sure they don’t do adventure, bravery, and courage and without getting too contentious, if you were trapped in a boat cascading down a river towards an approaching chasm with a nice guy on the left river bank and good guy on the right, we all know who you would shout for, don’t we girls?

Nice is alright when life is drifting merrily along, but when the going gets tough, we need more than nice, we need good. So, there may be a lot of nice people in the world, but I have no interest in being one of them. As of now, I’m done with Mr Nice Guy. The word nice has no place in the Bible, and no function in my life. You can’t get by on niceties you need something more.

The Bible says that God is good, not nice. And those who follow after him should desire to be the same. I don’t want to whimper round in life playing up to everyone so as to give the appearance of being a nice guy. I want to be a good person, someone who learned how to make good decisions even on his bad days. And if I can attain that maybe the saying, ‘The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord’, will become true of me.

The Killer in Me

ITV’s latest venture into the world of Genetics came last week by way of the programme ‘Killer in Me’. An introduction for the programme on their website reads.

The Killer in Me charts the journeys of GMTV presenter, Fiona Phillips, former England footballer John Barnes, Heart FM disc jockey Toby Anstis and former newspaper editor and political presenter, Andrew Neil as they undertake a one stop DNA test to find out which common killers could be hidden within their genes. For the celebrities this is an opportunity to look into the future, opening a window not just on their lives but potentially their deaths. But just how much knowledge can they handle?

The lightening pace with which science is progressing opens the door to many new therapies and recipes some of which might threaten mankind others which might save it from some of our deadliest diseases. This latest programme opened up the ongoing moral dilemma in our fast and changing world – the DNA test. Presented with the opportunity to have 11 serious illnesses marked off on their own personal score chart, the celebrities had to decide whether or not to take the test and if so would they have all the results available to them or simply pick and mix – the choice was theirs.

John Barnes has a family history of heart disease and prostate cancer and an ongoing love of fast food.  His wife was anxious for him to drop the fast food and keen that he take the test that it might motivate him to action. He scored low on the gene for prostate cancer, but high on the gene for heart disease. It was a sombre moment as he sat with Dr Paul Jenkins and listened to his results. He took it on the chin and went away with a desire to mend his ways. ‘You cannot change your genes,’ said the doctor, ‘but you can alter your lifestyle’, – one of the main reasons, in his opinion for taking the test.

Fiona Phillip’s mother beat breast cancer but died some years later in her sixties from Alzheimer’s disease. She spent time agonising over whether or not to take all 11 results from the test. An anxious and obviously uncomfortable Phillips sat and twittered in the chair opposite Dr Jenkins as he went through the results. The relief on her face was tangible as he told her she scored low on several indicators for diseases. When it came to the Alzheimer’s test, she declined to know the results.

The world in which we live is changing. What would you do if faced with such a test? Will a time come when babies are genetically tested at birth and dispatched to ward with an expected life span and the likelihood to certain diseases mapped and labelled? Will such information be required by insurance companies to either accept or reject us as clients? The moral maze of a technically advanced world is complex indeed.

The world of genetics is vast – the fastest growing area of medicine. The implications for humanity are simply colossal but as with all advancement there will be winners and losers. The losers are usually the poor and vulnerable – those without money and influence. Our response to such a world is how to use science to destroy disease without killing off the most vulnerable it needs to protect.

As for whether I would take the test myself. I’m really not sure. I’ve seen enough of hospitals of late to want to take a rain check on that one, at least that’s my excuse – but what about you?

A Gaff in the Making

When the producers of this week’s National Television Awards made the decision to get Lewis Hamilton to present the Special Achievement Award to Jeremy Clarkson it was only a matter of waiting to see the major gaff they’d created. It was a high on style low on substance choice which was bound to backfire. Who in their right mind is going to set up a young, talented, but inexperienced at presenting, racing driver against the giant that is Clarkson – sheer madness. It was clear that Hamilton was out of his depth, trying to lead a conversation that was beyond him and we watched him stumble when Clarkson turned the tables by asking him why he’d chosen to leave the country to live in Switzerland. ‘Switzerland’, asked Clarkson, ‘out of the 140 countries in our world, you choose Switzerland.’ Talk about inappropriate.

Their choice was indicative of the culture we live in: all style no content. If you are going to make a presentation to the likes of Clarkson then you have to set a giant against a giant otherwise the exercise looses grace and unravels into nonsense. You end up with a fiasco where inexperience presents to experience, it simply doesn’t work

Somewhere, we have lost the principal of seniority exchanging it for showmanship and no-one wins in such a world. You don’t get the best of the senior, since he is not given an adequate sparring partner, and you leave a young man floundering as he stumbles over his words and actions trying to keep up with someone who overshadows him. Should Hamilton be interviewed on Top Gear – absolutely. Should he present the top award to its loud mouthed presenter, goodness, no. Only an idiot, interested simply in ratings would come up with such an idea.